


Undone

by DonDurkofDowdee



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gems In Heat, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-01-30 01:36:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21420046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonDurkofDowdee/pseuds/DonDurkofDowdee
Summary: Witches transform Jasper into a beast and bind her to their forest. Jasper is freed from the weight of her past, but there is one person she's not ready to let go of.
Relationships: Jasper/Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

Emra the witch stirred from her long sleep. 

“Who is that,” she whispered. She stretched and unfurled herself. Her cave had been quiet for an era and now it seemed new creatures disturbed her every other week. 

Like a spider she crawled through the darkness to a pool on the floor of the cave. The pool was still and lit by a ring of blue bioluminescent algae. Emra touched her fingertip to the pool’s surface. The water rippled to reveal a view of the forest. Ancient trees covered in green moss stretched their gnarled branches to the sky. They looked like giant hands reaching up from the earth.

Emra leaned in for a closer look. 

“Oh my,” she croaked. “Ura, come here!” 

A groan rose from the darkness. Something large and cumbersome rolled down the side of the wall and pooled itself by the water’s edge. 

“What is it,” Ura hissed. 

“Look,” Emra said, “Another one has entered our woods.” 

Ura did look and gasped at what she saw. A large quartz warrior gem had bedded down for the night beneath one of their trees.

“Oh, she’s gorgeous,” Ura whispered, her eyes glittering.

“Gorgeous,” Emra echoed.

“So much larger than the others.”

“And those horns. And that mane!” 

“A lion’s mane, yes. We must have this one,” said Ura as the shadows around her began to dance with excitement. 

“Grab her, sister. Quickly before she wakes.”

Ura stretched her hand down to the pool and made a fist over the warrior’s reflection. The warrior poofed and her gem dropped to the moss on which she’d been sleeping. Ura reached into the pool and carefully picked up the gem between her fingers.

“Precious thing,” she cooed, eyeing the red orange color through the light of the pool.

“Fire. Blood,” Emra whispered. 

“Rage,” Ura whispered.

They whisked away deeper into the cave to another pool. This pool was small and black, hidden down at the bottom of a tunnel so small and twisted that only shadows could have ever reached it. 

Ura placed the gem into the pool. She grabbed her sister’s hands and together they chanted.

_Fire and blood, blood and bone._   
_From light to heat, to beast from stone._   
_Beauty of earth, fear come undone._   
_Rise to the day and burn like the sun._   
_Sleep and hunger and animal needs._   
_Protect these woods from all misdeeds._   
_Maidens wail and soldiers mourn._   
_Creature to us now become born!_

Inky tendrils seeped through the pool and formed a cage of fingers around the gem. The gem’s color waned. Ura waved her hand over the pool to show the spot under the tree where the warrior had been sleeping. The black fingers closed in a fist around the gem and then whirled into a funnel that reached down to the base of the tree. Shadows formed themselves to the warrior’s new shape. Light from the gem filtered down the center of the funnel and poured into the form.

When it was done the witches leaned in to admire their new addition. 

“Wonderful beast,” Emra hissed.

“With the parts to proliferate,” Ura cackled. “She could sire us a dozen young by spring.”

“Ohhh could you imagine, sister? We’ll have to find her some suitable mates,” said Emra. 

“She’ll find them quick enough herself I think. Large creatures have large appetites.”

The witches laughed and receded from the pool, leaving the gem alone in the darkness. 


	2. Chapter 2

Morning dawned clear and warm. Jasper yawned and opened her eyes. The mossy bed had worked out better than she had anticipated last night. She barely remembered falling asleep and her sleep had been deep and dreamless. 

A bird in a branch above her tweeted cheerfully. The trees in this forest were like no others she’d seen so far. The green moss that covered much of the ground covered most of the trees as well, the gouges of their black bark showing through only in patches. The trees did not have leaves. Their branches grew long and thick like vines that all tangled together to form a thorny canopy through which beams of sunlight filtered. 

Jasper sat up and put a hand to her head. Something was not right. She started to get to her feet but jumped when something behind her moved as well. She cursed and hop-jumped again, swiping her arm to get the thing away from her. Her arm hit something furry and she felt the impact up the back of her tail bone.

“What the…”

She twisted herself to try and look at whatever had attached itself to her butt. The wolfish white tail of a quartz monster poked out from the back of her pants. 

“What the hell is this?” She grabbed the tail and yanked as though to snatch it off. The resulting pain caught her by surprise. Was the tail somehow stuck into her back like an arrow? Had she somehow fallen asleep on the remains of a quartz monster and partially fused with it? That didn’t make sense. It hadn’t been that dark when she’d settled in for the night. 

Cold washed over her. She felt a dull throbbing in her chest. 

She hooked her thumbs into her pants and pushed them down, surprised again by a resulting pain down her legs. She lifted her hands. Her fingernails had thickened and grown into short points. 

She felt another wash of cold and a weight dropped in her stomach. She reached around and felt down her lower back to the tail. The tail wasn’t stuck into her. It was a part of her.

With her pants around her knees she looked down at herself. White fur grew up from between her legs towards a belly button that previously hadn’t been there. There was new weight between her legs as well, a round pack of furred flesh carried between her thighs with an opening at the tip. The sight unnerved her. An injury? She pulled her pants back up. 

A rushing sound filled her ears. The throbbing in her chest became more pronounced and she pressed her hand over it. 

“A heartbeat?” 

Gems didn’t have hearts. They didn’t have organs at all unless they deliberately formed them. Gems didn’t-

Jasper stopped.

“My gem!” She crossed her eyes and pinched the regular human nose in the middle of her face. “No!”

She scoured frantically over her body for her gem hoping it had just moved. How could she even exist without a gem? A gem is the thing that she was. Her body was just a projection of light with density and mass. What was she if her gem was gone? 

She felt lightheaded and had to lean against the tree. This had to be some trick. Maybe it was a dream, or a hallucination. 

“Get it together,” she growled. 

A twig snapped somewhere behind her. Her ears twitched at the sound and she whipped her head about. 

“Who’s there?” she shouted. “Who did this? Come out!” 

She stormed down the narrow trail in the direction of the sound. The wind carried a scent with it, of what she did not know. She followed it, her amber eyes darting between the trees. Jasper was eight feet tall and her strides carried her quickly and with surprising agility. She broke into a jog, then a run, first on two legs and then on all fours.

Suddenly she wasn’t trying to catch anything. She was just running. A wild panic had gripped her and the only thing she could think was that she had to get as far away as she could. Deep tracks and a ruin of broken branches and underbrush were left in her awake. Animals sensed her coming and scattered away. 

Ahead she saw light break between the trees at the edge of the forest. Almost there. She took a running leap and crashed through the tree line. Instead of sunlight and a view of the wide open world she found herself falling into a pit of darkness. 

She landed hard on her shoulder and a guttural animal roar tore from her throat. Loneliness hollowed her. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry for everything…” 

In this darkness she had no defenses. She could not compartmentalize or push down any thoughts or feelings. Every insecurity was laid bare to the forefront of her mind. She had been created in the worst kindergarten of the worst planet and everyone knew it. She was the worst of everything and she regretted everything she’d ever done. She never should have been made. Was it any surprise she hadn’t been able to protect Pink Diamond? Useless. Rotten to the core. No one would miss her, no one had even liked her. It was good that she’d lost her gem and wherever it was she hoped it got shattered. She hoped everyone she’d ever met would forget her. 

She rolled onto her back and watched the tree line of the forest float further and further away. Soon it was gone and she was alone, even more alone than she’d been at the bottom of the ocean. At least then she’d been fused. This was something different. 

She closed her eyes and let the darkness swallow her. 


	3. Chapter 3

Steven woke with a start. Another terrible dream. Nothing but darkness and isolation and...

He rolled onto his side and shivered, wiping tears from his eyes. He focused on the softness of his pillow beneath his cheek. He was home in bed. The gems were here with him. He was safe and surrounded by friends and loved ones. But the sensation of the dream echoed through him. He’d been lost in darkness, sure that he’d fallen so deep that no one could see or hear him. The worst part was how he’d reached out even though he knew there was nothing to reach for, knowing that it was useless to try.

He sat up and ran his hand through his hair. This was the fifth night in a row that he’d had this dream and each time the feelings grew more pronounced. Something was wrong and he’d had just about enough of it. 

“Right,” he said and laid back. He positioned himself in the middle of the bed and brought the covers to his chin, closing his eyes. He’d gotten pretty good about being able to have lucid dreams when he wanted them. He wasn’t going to get any answers floating around in the dark.

It wasn’t long before he was walking into the Big Donut. Mr Dewey was there packaging up a box of donuts for a customer at the counter. 

“Hey, Mr Dewey,” Steven said.

“Hey Steven,” replied the former mayor. 

Steven approached the counter. He was just about to place an order when his feet began to sink through the floor.

“Huh? Oh, right,” he said, already having forgotten that this was a dream. 

“See ya later,” said Mr Dewey, smiling. 

The walls of the Big Donut melted away. Steven sank through the floor and into a black void below. 

His teeth clenched and he fisted his hands at his side. 

“Keep it together,” he said. “Gotta keep cool.” 

Water rushed around him up to his chest. He was on his hands and knees in a river. In the water in front of him he could make out the blurry forms of fish. He punched his hand into the water trying to grab one. 

“Come on.” Anger welled in his chest. He grabbed again and again but the fish were too quick. He was so damn hungry, hadn’t eaten since yesterday. He roared and grabbed a large boulder from the river bed, lifting it over his head and then letting it drop onto the fish below. A cloud of blood bloomed from under the boulder. He rolled the boulder to the side and moved quickly to grab the crushed fish bodies before the current swept them away.

He carried the fish to shore and sat down. He was too hungry to care about trying to cook them. He ate them whole and raw, spitting out bones as needed. When he was done he laid back. Still hungry. He needed more than fish. He looked at his hands covered in gristle and blood. Disgusting. The palm of his left hand was bleeding, probably cut from the boulder. 

“Damn,” he muttered. 

Clattering pans in the kitchen startled him awake. Steven groaned and pulled the covers over his face, his tongue still searching his mouth for errant fish scales and bone shards.

Amethyst smiled at him when he came down the stairs. She was in the middle of stirring a bowl of pancake batter.

“Whoa, you look terrible,” she said. “Another bad night?”

“Kinda,” Steven replied as he climbed onto one of the barstools. “I’m making progress though. It wasn’t just darkness this time. I think I was seeing through someone’s eyes again.”

Amethyst poured a large ladle’s worth of batter into the pan on the stove. 

“Like Blue Diamond?” she asked. 

Steven nodded. “I think so. Just not her this time.” 

He closed his eyes and tried to remember details of the dream. 

“I was in a river somewhere trying to catch fish. But not with a fishing pole or anything. Like a bear catching salmon. And I was so hungry.” 

Amethyst snickered. “And you’re sure you’re not just going to bed hungry?” 

“I’ve done that plenty of times before,” Steven said. “This was different. It wasn’t just hunger. I’m not sure how to describe it.”

When the pancakes were done Amethyst divided them up between Steven and herself. Together they sat at the table to eat. Garnet and Pearl sat behind them on the couch to read the morning paper. 

Steven picked at his pancakes as he thought back over the dream. That river could have been anywhere. Who would have the strength to hoist what must have been a 400 pound boulder over their head? And more importantly, why were they invading his dream space? Or was he invading theirs?


	4. Chapter 4

Jasper knelt by the felled deer and stabbed her knife into its underbelly. The deer screamed and jerked and soon went still, blood pooling out into the grass. 

Her first deer. Jasper wiped the sweat from her face with her forearm. She was naked and covered head to toe with mud to mask her scent. Pursuing deer to exhaustion didn’t work when she couldn’t follow them outside of the woods. She’d had to get creative. 

She wiped the blood from her knife and then returned it to the fine black leather sheath that hung from a strip tied around her waist. She grabbed the deer carcass and hefted it up over her shoulders. For once she would be able to eat until her belly was full. The thought made her smile. 

She made her way through the woods, her footsteps silent on the moss. Eventually the forest thinned and the ground sloped up to where it met the bottom of a cliff face. The ground here was grassy and dotted with white rocks. The cliff was white as well, a jutting wedge of rock that stuck up above the forest canopy. 

Jasper made her way up the slope to the base of the cliff. Just above her was the mouth of a shallow cave. She adjusted the deer to one shoulder and climbed into the cave, using gouges she’d made in the rock as hand holds. 

The cave did not go very deep. At the mouth were the remains of a fire and a couple of crude clay pots filled with water. At the back was a bed of moss and pine needles covered with a cougar pelt. Jasper knelt and leaned forward to drop the deer carcass.

“Come and get it,” she said. 

A couple of cougar cubs nosed their way out from behind the bed and came to inspect the deer. One tentatively grabbed the deer’s neck while the other licked at the wound in the deer’s belly. The cubs were several months old, still showing their spots. 

While the cubs sniffed around, Jasper grabbed a handful of dried moss and used a piece of flint and her knife to get a fire going. She then added a couple logs and blew at the base of the flames until the logs began to burn. When the fire burned steadily she got up and looked at the deer. One of the cubs had grabbed it by a hoof and was making an attempt to drag it off. 

“That’s not all for you,” Jasper said. She’d never dressed a deer before, but how hard could it be? The legs looked easy enough to manage. With the deer carcass on its side she lifted the front leg and used her knife to cut at the arm pit. With a little work, a little sawing, she was able to pull the leg away from the body. 

“Here,” she said and tossed the leg to the cubs. The cubs sniffed at it and then began to lick at some of the exposed meat. 

Jasper used her knife to peel back more of the deer’s skin and expose the muscle beneath. Without any knowledge of what cuts to make she simply cut off chunks of meat where it looked good and set them aside. When she had a few chunks ready she skewered one on her knife and sat cross legged by the fire to cook it. She ate this way for what seemed like a long while, cutting off parts of the deer and cooking them one or two at a time. 

When the cubs had eaten their fill they climbed out of the den to go play. Jasper watched them run about the rocks below, wrestling and stalking each other. The cubs never went far and always came running at the first whiff of danger. Jasper was fine to let them stay in the den and share her prey with them, but beyond that she had no idea what to do with them. It wasn’t like she could teach them how cougars survived in the wild. She’d barely been surviving herself. For the most part she let the cubs do as they wished. As they grew they would probably wander further and further away and eventually there would come a day when they did not return. It was the best any of them could hope for. 

After she was done eating Jasper climbed to the top of the rock wedge to watch the sun rise. She yawned and stretched like a large cat then sat with her legs crossed, leaning back on her hands. From here she could see out over the top of the tree canopy. The forest stretched for miles in all directions, filling the valley between two mountains. Because of its position there was often fog from the late evening until morning. 

Jasper looked up at the clouds overhead, piled high like enormous towers. They reminded her of the tall buildings back on Homeworld. She didn’t think of Homeworld as often as she used to. Life had been hard for a long time now. She’d had more pressing things to worry about.

_And…_

She looked down at her tail curled along her side. She wasn’t a gem anymore. She was something else, she didn’t know what. 

Craning her head back, she took a deep breath and exhaled from deep in her chest, opening her throat with a practiced ‘ah’ shape. Her roar rumbled the air like thunder. The sound made her smile. It had taken her weeks to get that loud. 

When Jasper returned to her den there was a large red apple next to the deer carcass. Jasper looked at the apple blankly for a moment. She then picked it up, sniffed it, and took a bite. 


End file.
